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Solitude at Sea

Three years, 30,000 miles

Reviewed by John Rousmaniere

Anybody hoping for a happier second act in life will find inspiration—as well as caution—in the story of Captain Joshua Slocum (1844-1908). Praised by Theodore Roosevelt as the hero "who takes his little boat, without any crew but himself, all around the world," Slocum stimulated thousands to change their lives with his 1900 book, Sailing Alone Around the World, which recounts that adventure.

That Geoffrey Wolff tells this story knowledgably and sympathetically should be no surprise. He is, after all, the author of The Duke of Deception, Black Sun and other books about tipping points in the male ego. Wolff is also a fine writer who understands how another fine writer could produce one of the very best books ever about going to sea.

The Hard Way Around: The Passages of Joshua Slocum

Slocum initially went to sea not for romance, but to escape his father's beatings and the tiny Nova Scotia island of his childhood. For years he thrived as a captain of commercial sailing ships. But by his fortieth birthday, steam was supplanting sail, so he lost his livelihood. Then he lost his wife—the only person who ever loved and understood him. At 50 years old, the former clipper-ship captain was working on shore as a carpenter when a friend offered him an ancient and decrepit 37-foot fishing sloop. As Slocum rebuilt Spray, he devised a daring plan.

Ever since Magellan, large crews of sailors had been sailing around the world for cash. Slocum, already the accomplished author of short pieces, would make the trip alone and sell his words about it. This scheme led to a great voyage and a masterpiece of maritime writing.

Before setting out, Slocum faced two crucial questions: Was Spray up to the job? Was he? Without another sailor, Spray would have to steer itself for days on end. Unsure that this was possible, Slocum kept delaying his departure. After he finally got under way, in July 1895, Spray showed a wondrous ability to steer any course without his hand on the wheel. Modern boats are as flighty as butterflies; Spray was as steady as a whale.

But could her skipper cope with the loneliness? He confessed that loneliness first got to him when he dreamed up the ghost of an old seaman who identified himself as a pilot of Columbus and assured Slocum that all was well. After that, wrote Slocum, "The acute pain of solitude experienced at first never returned." He was a contented man as he sailed through the Straits of Magellan to Australia, and then to South Africa and home. Like so many solitary men, Slocum found it a little too easy to cross the line from the social world to the lonely world. Loneliness was his identity. He credited it for his fame and success, bragging that his navigation was precise because he had no shipmate to distract him.

After three years and 30,000 miles, Slocum's journey was over. But he loved solitude too much to be at home on land. Happy only at sea, unable to resume domesticity with his second wife, he sold himself cheap as a sideshow exhibit at the Buffalo World's Fair and spent his winters in the West Indies, collecting conch shells to sell to American yachtsmen. He reached bottom when a scandal involving a girl ended with a term in a New Jersey jail.

Ironically, as Slocum the man declined, his reputation only grew. Even after the sex scandal, President Roosevelt sent his son Archie off sailing with Slocum in Spray for a tutorial in heroic manliness.

Yet that one word, alone, at the heart of his reputation, also undermined him for keeps. In 1908, lonelier than ever, he sailed off in Spray and vanished in the Atlantic.

JOHN ROUSMANIERE's maritime books include Fastnet, Force 10, After the Storm and The Annapolis Book of Seamanship.

Plaintiff's Cry

Inside the Merck trial

Reviewed by Marie Gryphon

Make this one book that can't be judged by its cover. You would think it belongs on a shelf next to screeds by Michael Moore. That's too bad, since readers may unwittingly pass up this nuanced and humorous story of superlawyer Mark Lanier's high-stakes trial against pharmaceutical giant Merck.

Author Snigdha Prakash was embedded in the legal team representing two plaintiffs, who in turn served as test cases for a large pool of people making similar claims. The seven-week trial determined whether Merck failed to warn doctors adequately about research indicating that Vioxx, its blockbuster prescription painkiller, caused heart attacks. Readers seeking a rigorous, impartial evaluation of the merits of the litigation should look elsewhere. But as an inside account of an extraordinary team of lawyers at work, All the Justice Money Can Buy is a first-rate legal thriller.

All the Justice Money Can Buy: Corporate Greed on Trial

Lawyer Mark Lanier is the star of both the trial and the book. While Prakash clearly admires her subject, she does not omit his flaws. As an indication of his constant need for attention, Lanier is shown compulsively regaling anyone who will listen about his past and planned legal exploits, even while brushing his teeth in the morning. He often fails to recall events in the same way that his colleagues do, discrepancies the author records without comment but that generate the impression of a man who is constantly spinning narratives, both in and out of the courtroom.

The book's detailed description of the plaintiffs' trial strategy could be assigned to law students as a case study in effective advocacy. Lanier is adamant that a jury can learn only three concepts a day, and he presents these with the help of carefully selected visual metaphors: a brass scale to illustrate his scientific argument that Vioxx disrupted the body's balance between pro- and anti-clotting agents that protect the heart, and a speeding truck to illustrate his legal argument that Merck failed to slow its Vioxx rollout in response to a scientific "yellow light." Juries struggle to remember names, so Lanier gives each witness a memorable title or nickname that reinforces his spin on the witnesses' testimony.

Mass tort litigation isn't brunch at the club, and real animosity crackles between Lanier's team and Merck's attorneys as the trial progresses. Some of it is surprisingly juvenile. Lanier habitually calls Merck lawyer Diane Sullivan "Doofus" behind her back, and Sullivan spits whispered insults in Lanier's direction ("He's a liar!") as he speaks to judge or jury.

More disturbing is the strategic cheating. In an early gambit, Lanier submits still photos of animated slides to the trial judge for pre-approval—having carefully selected frames that don't show the objectionable "blood all over the ground" that will appear to the jury moments later. Sullivan flagrantly ignores judicial instructions forbidding her to mention Merck's home-state ties and cancer research because she well knows that the judge has no scheduled time to discard the carefully selected jury and begin again.

This fast-paced book comes to an ambiguous end. The jury finds Merck liable for real damages to only one of the two plaintiffs in the case, a half-victory that the plaintiffs' team experiences as defeat. The plaintiffs eventually settle their respective appeals for relatively modest and surprisingly similar amounts of money. In an epilogue, Prakash describes a subsequent mass settlement agreement between Merck and the plaintiffs' bar that appears more generous to the lawyers involved than to anyone else.

MARIE GRYPHON, a former practicing attorney, is a writer living in Boston.

A-Bomb Politics

The haves vs. the have-nots

Reviewed by Glenn C. Altschuler

"There is no evil in the atom," Adlai Stevenson declared in 1952. "Only in men's souls."

No one understands this better than Mohamed ElBaradei. Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency from 1997 to 2009—and winner of the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize—ElBaradei has spent much of his professional life trying to prevent nuclear terrorism, proliferation and war.

In The Age of Deception, ElBaradei provides a blunt, behind-the-scenes analysis of negotiations between the nuclear "haves" and "have-nots," including Iraq, North Korea and Iran, and makes recommendations, some of them highly controversial, about how to achieve an "enduring and collective security."

The Age of Deception: Nuclear Diplomacy in Treacherous Times

The Iraq war, ElBaradei writes, was an egregious example of a pervasive pattern. The U.S., Israel and, to some extent, the nuclear nations of Western Europe, he argues, not without reason, want to be in charge and "to push, to prod, to put pressure, to set deadlines, to dominate the debate, to inflict punishments." Holding on to their own arsenals "like a security blanket," with thousands of weapons still on "hair trigger" alert, they treat as pariahs or rogues countries seeking entry to their exclusive club.

The author views the "stalemate" with North Korea and Iran through this prism. He maintains, not always persuasively, that sanctions, diplomatic isolation and military force always backfire. These responses have at times strengthened the hand of hard-liners in Pyongyang and Tehran. But Israel's bombing of the Dair Alzour facility in Syria in September 2007, whether or not it was unlawful or unethical, appears to have had the desired effect.

While castigating the Western powers, ElBaradei comes close to giving Iran a free pass. But agree with him or not, he gives voice to attitudes and feelings that are widely shared in the Middle East—and beyond. For this reason alone we should pay attention to him.

On at least two counts, moreover, ElBaradei is surely right: Nuclear diplomacy is "a tedious, wrenching business." And since collective security is "the only quest worth pursuing," there's no viable alternative to it.

GLENN C. ALTSCHULER is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies at Cornell University.

Market Wisdom

Winning at a losers' game

Reviewed by Martin Fridson

Oak Tree Capital Chairman Howard Marks originally planned to wait until he retired to write this book. Warren Buffett, a fan of Marks' famous client memos, offered to contribute a dust-jacket blurb if he would accelerate the publishing timetable. With that inducement, Marks produced what Buffett describes as "a rarity, a useful book." That assessment is vindicated by many valuable insights into the psychological roots of investors' habitual errors.

This isn't a book of formulas for picking stocks. Instead, it offers tips on thinking through your decisions. With a little more thought, Marks suggests, investors can overcome the emotional barriers to success. For instance, many bad purchases result from fear of missing out while others are striking it rich. Investors who compare themselves in this manner tend to jump in long after the money has been made, buying at the top of the market.

The Most Important Thing: Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor

While you're at it, forget the conventional wisdom of buying a stock if you have had a good experience with the company's product. The goal is not to find good companies, but to make good purchases. For Marks, a renowned investor in distressed bonds, poor-quality assets may offer the best values. "It's not what you buy," he says, "it's what you pay for it."

Much of the advice dispensed in The Most Important Thing sounds like simple common sense. But common sense is not always common among investors. In the span from 2005 through 2007, as Marks recounts, many market participants bought the "fairy tale" that risk had been vastly reduced through astute central-bank management. What little risk remained, claimed the bulls, had been healthily redistributed through securitization and brought under control by improved computer modeling.

The ensuing financial crisis proved this all to be an illusion, as Marks and a few other clear thinkers recognized beforehand. But the discrediting of the rationale for the last wave of overvaluation won't prevent new theories from emerging to justify the next grand fallacy.

Another piece of uncommon sense: Stop trying to predict the market's short run-ups and downs. Focus instead on identifying assets that are trading below their intrinsic value. Prices initially may fall even lower, but if your analysis is correct, you'll ultimately come out a winner.

Just plain thinking isn't good enough for investors who want to beat the averages, says Marks. It requires what he calls "second-level thinking." To a first-level thinker, for example, an outlook of low economic growth and rising inflation means it's time to dump stocks. The second-level thinker instead sees that everyone else is selling in a panic, meaning it's time to buy. Might that have practical application right now?

MARTIN FRIDSON is the global credit strategist at BNP Paribas Investment Partners. His many books include Financial Statement Analysis: A Practitioner's Guide, co-authored with Fernando Alvarez.

Sherlock, CFA

A novel of the '08 crash

Reviewed by Matt Barthel

Any novel set in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash starts with one strike against it. Nonfiction coverage of the crisis has already been so compellingly surreal that a fictionalized account seems hardly necessary.

But Insiders, by first-time novelist and financial advisor Marvin McIntyre (as the latter, he is ranked in the top 100 by Barron's), overcomes that handicap. It spins an exciting yarn while addressing a serious issue: The increased complexity of financial instruments calls for improved and increased oversight, but that very complexity places the industry beyond the understanding of the regulators who would rein it in.

The novel's main character is financial advisor Angus "Mac" McGregor, who is called on by a regulator friend to help solve a mystery. A former colleague of McGregor's named Jeremy Lyons has disappeared, but there is compelling evidence that he is operating a secret hedge fund.

Insiders

The fund is rumored to deliver spectacular returns, but because hedge funds are largely unregulated, almost nothing is known of Lyons and his business. Who are his clients? What does his fund invest in? How large is his operation? And most importantly, does he pose a threat to the stability of the post-2008 financial markets?

Before gathering this information, McGregor must answer a more basic question: Where is Jeremy Lyons? In the years since Mac worked with him, Lyons has apparently moved off the grid, leaving few clues of his whereabouts.

In a parallel story line that gives the story most of its sizzle, we learn all about Lyons' operation. A pathological character in the mold of the antihero protagonists of First Deadly Sin and American Psycho, Lyons has constructed a super-exclusive nightclub that he uses to attract businessmen and politicians from whom he can extract the inside information that produces his outsize returns.

Lyons' right-hand thug, Max, injects the story with a healthy dose of sadism, and some of Lyons' other underlings are featured in sexual scenes that could have been lifted from Stieg Larsson's best-selling thrillers.

The pursuit of Lyons is action-packed and entertaining, but the strength of Insiders lies in its specifics about the financial industry. McIntyre's knowledge of finance—the nuts and bolts of investment management and financial advisory—allow him to weave a story that is fantastical and realistic at the same time.

In the end, Insiders is a page-turner with a message. When McGregor is granted an audience with the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission in one of the book's last scenes, it's a call for more cooperation between the regulators and financial professionals.